


Beauty and Purpose

by Mithen



Category: Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: Character Study, Contemplative, Gen, Meaning of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the heroes ride off together, Inigo contemplates the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty and Purpose

The four white horses are fresh and eager to run; their hooves make a rhythmic pounding although their gait is gentle and kind. Perhaps it's the hypnotic sound, perhaps the effects of extreme blood loss, but as he rides into the night Inigo Montoya finds his thoughts wandering to odd places.

The Sicilian once gave a long speech--he called it a "soliloquy," which Inigo decided must be Sicilian for "rant"--about what he called "art for art's sake," and how true art exists only for its own beauty. Inigo still finds that a ridiculous thought. It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, it's just that his ideal of beauty has always been practical. His father's swords--ah, now there was beauty in shining steel, the way light ran like water off the metal, the delicate whorls of the basket hilts, the edge that could part a drifting feather. Beauty with a purpose, the pure loveliness of honed and whetted function. "A sword is not a bauble," his father would say as he worked the cherry-red metal, shaping it with love. "A sword is made to do great things, not to rust unused. Remember that, Inigo my son."

His own life, Inigo muses in the hoofbeat-punctuated moonlight, it has been something of a work of art as well. He has tempered his soul like a blade, forged his spirit into a weapon of purity and purpose. It was, he thinks wistfully, very beautiful. The Man in Black knows something of this, what it means to focus yourself to the keenest edge, to make yourself into something beautiful and deadly. But what of the weapon when its purpose is done? A sword hanging on a wall, reduced to a decoration--pfah, his father would say it was disgusting. 

Where was the beauty in his life now?

And yet, Inigo thinks, there is something more here, some revelation trembling in the moonlit air. It's in the way Westley looks at Buttercup, the smile she turns to him, brighter than any sword. Humperdinck and Rogen spent their whole lives focused on amassing power, bloated ticks feeding on all around them--there was no beauty in their ruthless purpose. No, Inigo thinks, there's something more there. Something in the quick flash of understanding between him and the Man in Black, or the long, meandering conversations between him and Fezzik, late at night when the Sicilian was asleep. Something less focused, more diffuse, and yet as true and strong as any blade.

Perhaps it's that he's giddy from the blood loss, but he laughs. It all seems very simple at the moment. He thinks perhaps his father would understand the beauty of it. He calls across to Fezzik's questioning look: "Friendship--true friendship--it's an art!"

"You know what? You're very _smart_!" the giant rumbles back, then throws back his head in a bellow of laughter that makes his horse shy sideways. Buttercup and Westley haven't heard the conversation, but they laugh too at the sound of Fezzik's laughter, and then all four of them are laughing, setting off toward the future together, and Inigo thinks it is very beautiful indeed.


End file.
